Papers by Karsten Steinhauer
Conference Cognitive Science, 1999
The rules governing adjective-noun order vary crosslinguistically, and event-related potentials h... more The rules governing adjective-noun order vary crosslinguistically, and event-related potentials have shown that violations of these rules elicit biphasic responses in native speakers and advanced non-native learners. We built on prior findings by replicating an English experiment and running a new experiment in Mandarin. In the replication, we tested native English speakers with advanced Mandarin proficiency (n=20); for the Mandarin experiment, we tested the same English-Mandarin bilinguals along with Mandarin native speakers (n=32). Native speakers in both languages showed the expected biphasic effect. However, to our surprise, native speakers' Mandarin results showed an additional effect at the first word of the correct adjective-noun order, and Mandarin non-native speakers showed only an early effect. To explore these results, we compared individual differences, showing that participants varied in response patterns. We interpret our results as demonstrating that even when languages share adjective placement rules, processing can be impacted by crosslinguistic differences.
Zeitschrift Fur Experimentelle Psychologie, 1997
ABSTRACT
Zeitschrift Fur Experimentelle Psychologie, 1997
ABSTRACT
Neurophysiologie Clinique-clinical Neurophysiology, 2013
s 69 distance between sound and deviance onset affected featureless deviants more than featured d... more s 69 distance between sound and deviance onset affected featureless deviants more than featured deviants only for the P3b. Behavioral data (d and reaction times) were not affected by deviance direction, or by deviance onset. Behavioral results and MMN amplitudes are in accordance with our previous study [1], using the same design, in an ignore condition (behavioral data were recorded after the electrophysiological session). We proposed that two mechanisms contribute to the MMN evoked by featured deviants: the memory comparison process and the adaptation/fresh-afferent one. We demonstrate, here, that the P300 follows the same pattern as the MMN and that the fact that the P300 is affected by the feature/featureless nature of the deviant stimuli has to be considered. Moreover, the P3b evoked by featureless deviants seems more sensitive to deviance onset within the Temporal Window of Integration than the one evoked by featured deviants. Reference [1] Hoonhorst I, Deltenre P, Markessis E, Collet G, Pablos Martin X, Colin C. Evidence for a dual vs single origin of the MMNs evoked by featured vs featureless deviants. Clin Neurophysiol 2012;123:1561—2167. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neucli.2012.11.006
Mandarin Chinese is typologically unusual among the worlds' languages in having flexible word ord... more Mandarin Chinese is typologically unusual among the worlds' languages in having flexible word order despite a near absence of inflectional morphology. These features of Mandarin challenge conventional linguistic notions such as subject and object and the divide between syntax and semantics. In the present study, we tested monolingual processing of argument structure in Mandarin verb-final sentences, where word order alone is not a reliable cue. We collected participants' responses to a forced agent-assignment task while measuring their electroencephalography (EEG) data to capture real-time processing throughout each sentence. We found that sentence interpretation was not informed by word order in the absence of other cues, and while the coverbs BA and BEI were strong signals for agent selection, comprehension was a result of multiple cues. These results challenge previous reports of a linear ranking of cue strength. Event-related potentials (ERPs) showed that BA and BEI impacted participants' processing even before the verb was read and that role reversal anomalies elicited an N400 effect without a subsequent semantic P600. This study demonstrates that Mandarin sentence comprehension requires online interaction among cues in a language-specific manner, consistent with models that predict crosslinguistic differences in core sentence processing mechanisms.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Sep 17, 2020
Recent neurophysiological research suggests that slow cortical activity tracks hierarchical synta... more Recent neurophysiological research suggests that slow cortical activity tracks hierarchical syntactic structure during online sentence processing. Here we tested an alternative hypothesis: electrophysiological activity peaks at constituent phrase as well as sentence frequencies reflect cortical tracking of overt or covert (implicit) prosodic grouping. Participants listened to series of sentences presented in three conditions while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. First, prosodic cues in the sentence materials were neutralized. We found an EEG spectral power peak elicited at a frequency that only 'tagged' covert, implicit prosodic change, but not any major syntactic constituents. In the second condition, participants listened to a series of sentences with overt prosodic grouping cues that either aligned or misaligned with the syntactic phrasing in the sentences (initial overt prosody trials). Following each overt prosody trial, participants were presented with a second series of sentences lacking overt prosodic cues (instructed prosody trial) and were instructed to imagine the prosodic contour present in the previous, overt prosody trial. The EEG responses reflected an interactive relationship between syntactic processing and prosodic tracking at the frequencies of syntactic constituents (sentences and phrases): alignment of syntax and prosody boosted EEG responses, whereas their misalignment had an opposite effect. This was true for both overt and imagined prosody conditions. We conclude that processing of both overt and covert prosody is reflected in the frequency-tagged neural responses at sentence constituent frequencies. These findings need to be incorporated in any account that aims to identify neural markers reflecting syntactic processing. Language comprehension involves a variety of cognitive mechanisms for processing multiple types of information, from auditory perception to integration of words' semantic content with the grammatical structure of sentences. While some of these processing mechanisms have parallels across the animal kingdom 1 , building and processing syntactic structures has been suggested as a unique element of human language that distinguishes it from communication in other animals 2,3. According to syntactic theories 4,5 , phrase structure is built from smaller linguistic elements that are combined into increasingly larger units (i.e., from words/morphemes to phrases to sentences), creating a hierarchical structure of grammatical constituents. However, whether this theoretical framework can help describe how the human brain processes language in real time remains controversial 6. Psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies attempting to demonstrate the cognitive processing of hierarchically represented phrasal structures have typically used rather unnatural tasks (such as 'click' detection 7,8) or inferred neurocognitive parsing mechanisms from processing of syntactic errors 9,10. This work often produced ambiguous data that could alternatively be explained in terms of semantic or prosodic processing that takes place in parallel to, but is distinct from, syntactic processing 11. Several recent studies provided preliminary fMRI and electrophysiological data on brain responses to syntactic phrase boundaries in grammatical sentences 12-15. The challenges of distinguishing syntactic processing effects per se from those that only appear to be syntactic explain why the recent magnetoencephalographic (MEG)
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Jul 1, 2009
Listeners' aesthetic and emotional responses to music typically occur in the context of long musi... more Listeners' aesthetic and emotional responses to music typically occur in the context of long musical passages that contain structures defined in terms of the events that precede them. We describe an electrophysiological study of listeners' brain responses to musical accents that coincided in longer musical sequences. Musically trained listeners performed a timbre-change detection task in which a single-tone timbre change was positioned within 4-bar melodies composed of 350-ms tones to coincide or not with melodic contour accents and temporal accents (induced with temporal gaps). Event-related potential responses to (task-relevant) attended timbre changes elicited an early negativity (MMN/N2b) around 200 ms and a late positive component around 350 ms (P300), reflecting updating of the timbre change in working memory. The amplitudes of both components changed systematically across the sequence, consistent with expectancy-based context effects. Furthermore, melodic contour changes modulated the MMN/N2b response (but not the P300) to timbre changes in later sequence positions. In contrast, task-irrelevant temporal gaps elicited an MMN that was not modulated by position within the context; absence of a P300 indicated that temporal-gap accents were not updated in working memory. Listeners' neural responses to musical structure changed systematically as sequential predictability and listeners' expectations changed across the melodic context.
Neuroscience Letters, Mar 1, 2010
This study used ERPs to determine whether older adults use prosody in resolving early and late cl... more This study used ERPs to determine whether older adults use prosody in resolving early and late closure ambiguities comparably to young adults. Participants made off-line acceptability judgments on well-formed sentences or those containing prosody-syntax mismatches. Behaviorally, both groups identified mismatches, but older subjects accepted mismatches significantly more often than younger participants. ERP results demonstrate CPS components and garden-path effects (P600s) in both groups, however, older adults displayed no N400 and more anterior P600 components. The data provide the first electrophysiological evidence suggesting that older adults process and integrate prosodic information in real-time, despite off-line behavioral differences. Age-related differences in neurocognitive processing mechanisms likely contribute to this dissociation.
Neuroreport, Jan 6, 2010
This ERP study examined how the human brain integrates different types of information when listen... more This ERP study examined how the human brain integrates different types of information when listeners encounter ambiguous 'garden path' sentences. Unlike previous studies, we investigated the real-time interaction of (1) structural preferences, (2) lexical transitivity biases, and (3) prosodic information. Data revealed that in absence of overt prosodic boundaries, verb-intrinsic transitivity biases influence parsing preferences (late closure) online, resulting in a larger P600 garden path effect for transitive than intransitive verbs. Surprisingly, this lexical effect was found to be mediated by prosodic processing, thus eliciting a CPS brain response in total absence of acoustic boundary markers (for transitively biased sentences only). Our results suggest early interactive integration of hierarchically organized processes rather than purely independent effects of lexical and prosodic information. As a primacy of prosodic cues would predict, overt speech boundaries overrode both structural preferences and transitivity biases.
Second Language Research, 2009
Scientific Reports, Oct 31, 2017
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is frequently associated with communicative impairment, regardless... more Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is frequently associated with communicative impairment, regardless of intelligence level or mental age. Impairment of prosodic processing in particular is a common feature of ASD. Despite extensive overlap in neural resources involved in prosody and music processing, music perception seems to be spared in this population. The present study is the first to investigate prosodic phrasing in ASD in both language and music, combining event-related brain potential (ERP) and behavioral methods. We tested phrase boundary processing in language and music in neuro-typical adults and high-functioning individuals with ASD. We targeted an ERP response associated with phrase boundary processing in both language and music-i.e., the Closure Positive Shift (CPS). While a language-CPS was observed in the neuro-typical group, for ASD participants a smaller response failed to reach statistical significance. In music, we found a boundary-onset music-CPS for both groups during pauses between musical phrases. Our results support the view of preserved processing of musical cues in ASD individuals, with a corresponding prosodic impairment. This suggests that, despite the existence of a domain-general processing mechanism (the CPS), key differences in the integration of features of language and music may lead to the prosodic impairment in ASD.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Oct 1, 2011
■ In reading, a comma in the wrong place can cause more severe misunderstandings than the lack of... more ■ In reading, a comma in the wrong place can cause more severe misunderstandings than the lack of a required comma. Here, we used ERPs to demonstrate that a similar effect holds for prosodic boundaries in spoken language. Participants judged the acceptability of temporarily ambiguous English "garden path" sentences whose prosodic boundaries were either in line or in conflict with the actual syntactic structure. Sentences with incongruent boundaries were accepted less than those with missing boundaries and elicited a stronger on-line brain response in ERPs (N400/P600 components). Our results support the notion that mentally deleting an overt prosodic boundary is more costly than postulating a new one and extend previous findings, suggesting an immediate role of prosody in sentence comprehension. Importantly, our study also provides new details on the profile and temporal dynamics of the closure positive shift (CPS), an ERP component assumed to reflect prosodic phrasing in speech and music in real time. We show that the CPS is reliably elicited at the onset of prosodic boundaries in English sentences and is preceded by negative components. Its early onset distinguishes the speech CPS in adults both from prosodic ERP correlates in infants and from the "music CPS" previously reported for trained musicians. ■
In this paper we present a preliminary speech production study concerning the prosodic realizatio... more In this paper we present a preliminary speech production study concerning the prosodic realization of the syntactic and information structure in German. Firstly, we made predicitions for the relative prominence and their assignment with tonal patterns. Secondly, exhaustive acoustic analysis were used to test the expectations. The data of a production experiment with seven non-instructed normal subjects were analyzed and then compared with the data of one patient with prosodic disorders.
Brain and Language, May 1, 2004
Fourteen native speakers of German heard normal sentences, sentences which were either lacking dy... more Fourteen native speakers of German heard normal sentences, sentences which were either lacking dynamic pitch variation (flattened speech), or comprised of intonation contour exclusively (degraded speech). Participants were to listen carefully to the sentences and to perform a rehearsal task. Passive listening to flattened speech compared to normal speech produced strong brain responses in right cortical areas, particularly in the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG). Passive listening to degraded speech compared to either normal or flattened speech particularly involved fronto-opercular and subcortical (Putamen, Caudate Nucleus) regions bilaterally. Additionally the Rolandic operculum (premotor cortex) in the right hemisphere subserved processing of neat sentence intonation. As a function of explicit rehearsing sentence intonation we found several activation foci in the left inferior frontal gyrus (BrocaÕs area), the left inferior precentral sulcus, and the left Rolandic fissure. The data allow several suggestions: First, both flattened and degraded speech evoked differential brain responses in the pSTG, particularly in the planum temporale (PT) bilaterally indicating that this region mediates integration of slowly and rapidly changing acoustic cues during comprehension of spoken language. Second, the bilateral circuit active whilst participants receive degraded speech reflects general effort allocation. Third, the differential finding for passive perception and explicit rehearsal of intonation contour suggests a right fronto-lateral network for processing and a left fronto-lateral network for producing prosodic information. Finally, it appears that brain areas which subserve speech (frontal operculum) and premotor functions (Rolandic operculum) coincidently support the processing of intonation contour in spoken sentence comprehension.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2009
This chapter provides an overview of the first few event-related potential (ERP) studies on L1 at... more This chapter provides an overview of the first few event-related potential (ERP) studies on L1 attrition, discussing their results and future directions. After briefly introducing the technique of ERPs in psycholinguistics, it shows that ERP studies are particularly suited to advance attrition research due to their power to track even subtle changes in cognitive processing in considerable detail. The ERP data available provide initial physiological evidence that L1 attrition in migrants’ brains occurs at lexical and morpho-syntactic levels of processing, modulated by the degree of exposure to the two languages. In extreme cases, L2-dominant attriters may perceive a grammatical sentence in their L1 as ungrammatical, if it violates the L2 grammar. Where ERP data patterns seem inconsistent across studies from different labs, the potential underlying reasons are discussed, briefly touching upon how L1 attrition may positively influence one’s L2, due to greater L1 inhibition and therefore less interference.
Language Learning, Jun 1, 2020
Scientific Reports, Aug 30, 2022
Recent neurophysiological research suggests that slow cortical activity tracks hierarchical synta... more Recent neurophysiological research suggests that slow cortical activity tracks hierarchical syntactic structure during online sentence processing. Here we tested an alternative hypothesis: electrophysiological activity peaks at constituent phrase as well as sentence frequencies reflect cortical tracking of overt or covert (implicit) prosodic grouping. Participants listened to series of sentences presented in three conditions while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. First, prosodic cues in the sentence materials were neutralized. We found an EEG spectral power peak elicited at a frequency that only 'tagged' covert, implicit prosodic change, but not any major syntactic constituents. In the second condition, participants listened to a series of sentences with overt prosodic grouping cues that either aligned or misaligned with the syntactic phrasing in the sentences (initial overt prosody trials). Following each overt prosody trial, participants were presented with a second series of sentences lacking overt prosodic cues (instructed prosody trial) and were instructed to imagine the prosodic contour present in the previous, overt prosody trial. The EEG responses reflected an interactive relationship between syntactic processing and prosodic tracking at the frequencies of syntactic constituents (sentences and phrases): alignment of syntax and prosody boosted EEG responses, whereas their misalignment had an opposite effect. This was true for both overt and imagined prosody conditions. We conclude that processing of both overt and covert prosody is reflected in the frequency-tagged neural responses at sentence constituent frequencies. These findings need to be incorporated in any account that aims to identify neural markers reflecting syntactic processing. Language comprehension involves a variety of cognitive mechanisms for processing multiple types of information, from auditory perception to integration of words' semantic content with the grammatical structure of sentences. While some of these processing mechanisms have parallels across the animal kingdom 1 , building and processing syntactic structures has been suggested as a unique element of human language that distinguishes it from communication in other animals 2,3. According to syntactic theories 4,5 , phrase structure is built from smaller linguistic elements that are combined into increasingly larger units (i.e., from words/morphemes to phrases to sentences), creating a hierarchical structure of grammatical constituents. However, whether this theoretical framework can help describe how the human brain processes language in real time remains controversial 6. Psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies attempting to demonstrate the cognitive processing of hierarchically represented phrasal structures have typically used rather unnatural tasks (such as 'click' detection 7,8) or inferred neurocognitive parsing mechanisms from processing of syntactic errors 9,10. This work often produced ambiguous data that could alternatively be explained in terms of semantic or prosodic processing that takes place in parallel to, but is distinct from, syntactic processing 11. Several recent studies provided preliminary fMRI and electrophysiological data on brain responses to syntactic phrase boundaries in grammatical sentences 12-15. The challenges of distinguishing syntactic processing effects per se from those that only appear to be syntactic explain why the recent magnetoencephalographic (MEG)
Applied Linguistics, Jun 26, 2014
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Papers by Karsten Steinhauer